In the future, food is no longer necessary—until Thalia begins to feel something unfamiliar and uncomfortable. She’s hungry.

In
Thalia’s world, there is no need for food—everyone takes medication (or
“inocs”) to ward off hunger. It should mean there is no more famine, no
more obesity, no more food-related illnesses, and no more war. At least
that's what her parents, who work for the company that developed the
inocs, say. But when Thalia meets a boy who is part of an underground
movement to bring food back, she realizes that most people live a life
much different from hers. Worse, Thalia is starting to feel hunger, and
so is he—the inocs aren’t working. Together they set out to find the
only thing that will quell their hunger: real food.

27 Apr 2014

The new wonderfully warm and witty novel from Fern Britton, the much-loved TV personality.Perfect for fans of Katie Fforde and Trisha Ashley.When
the residents of the Cornish seaside town of Trevay discover that their
ramshackle but much-loved theatre is about to be taken over by a global
coffee chain, Café au Lait, they are up in arms.

It is up to
Penny Leighton, hotshot Producer, to come up with a plan to save it. Armed with her only her
mobile phone and her enviable contacts book, she starts to pull in some
serious favours. Trevay soon finds itself at the centre of the universe
when more A-listers than you can shake a stick at arrive to take part in
a charity season at the theatre.The play throws out a chance to
Jess Tate, girlfriend to TV heartthrob Ryan Roberts. His career is on
the rise while hers remains resolutely in the doldrums. But when
opportunity comes calling, it isn’t just her career prospects that are
about to change.

Tevay is about to put on the show of its life – but can the villagers, and Jess, hold on to the thing they love the most?

Published: 24th April 2014Publisher: HarperCollinsGoodreads : Click hereAuthor Website: Click HereSeries: Not part of a series but recommend reading Hidden Treasures First.Source: Review Copy from PublisherReview: 9 out of 10

My Review

Fern is very quickly becoming one of my favourite authors of all time. Not only does she create an enthralling seaside community and describes the scenery so beautifully, she creates characters and scenarios that draw you in and keep you there until the story is done.

As you can probably tell from the first paragraph, I absolutely adored this story. There were quite a few characters to get to grips with but the way they were introduced to the story I had absolutely no trouble in keeping up with them and remembering who they are.

What I loved about this story...
Everything. The descriptions of locations were so great that they made me feel as if I was right there in the story, I loved that given the fact that at the time I was reading this book it was a typical rainy English day! The fact that each character had their own particular back story and mini plot in this story coupled with the fact that we had the major plot line of saving the theatre, kept my attention right until the very end of the story.

What I was not fond of with this story...
I loved this story from start to finish and cannot come up with anything that I was not fond of...

About the Author

Fern Britton, an English
television presenter, was born on 17 July 1957 in Ealing, London. She
was educated at Dr Challoner's High School in Little Chalfont and
underwent training in stage management at the Central School of Speech
and Drama. She is the daughter of the English actor, Tony Britton and
Ruth Britton. Fern Britton spent the early days of her life at
Buckinghamshire. Her older sister, Cherry Britton, is a script writer
and her younger half brother, Jasper Britton, is an actor. She is
married to the celebrity chef, Phil Vickery and lives with her family at
Holmer Green in Buckinghamshire.

Fern Britton worked with a
touring theatre company and in 1979, she started her career with
Westward Television in Plymouth. She worked as a newsreader and
continuity announcer on Westward Diary, the nightly local bulletin.
Later, she switched to present BBC’s Southwest news programme,
Spotlight. She became a known as the youngest national news presenter to
present News After Noon on BBC1. Fern Britton then moved to work for
TVS in Southampton, where she hosted the South edition of the news
programme, Coast to Coast, together with Fred Dinenage. She has also
presented other programmes, like Coast to Coast People, The Television
Show and Magic Moments.

Since then, Fern Britton has hosted
several programmes, which include Carlton Television's After Five, BBC's
Breakfast Time, London News Network's London Tonight and BBC 1’s
Holiday. She also featured in the first two series of The Brian Conley
Show and in 1994, Fern Britton went onto present the famous television
cookery game show, Ready Steady Cook. She hosted the show for a long
span of six years until she was succeeded by chef, Ainsley Harriott. She
joined hands with the British television presenter, Phillip Schofield
to host the famous television magazine show This Morning. Since 1999,
Fern Britton has been hosting the show and the couple was known for
their hilarious presentation. The show was a big hit and won the 2003
& 2004 TV Quick Award for the ‘Best Daytime Viewing’. It also
clinched the 2004 National Television Award for the ‘Most Popular
Daytime Show’.

Fern Britton anchored the Pride of Britain
Awards in 2002 and was one among the panellists on the satirical panel
show, Have I Got News for You.

In 2006, the song, “The
Fern Britton Experience”, which featured in the album, Hang The DJ was
named after her by the UK DJ Shitmat. She hosted the reality television
show, Soapstar Superstar, and the British Soap Awards 2006. At the Royal
Albert Hall, on 31 May 2007, Fern Britton presented the Classical BRIT
Awards and also co-presented the British Soap Awards that year.

Fern
Britton anchored her own ITV1 Saturday night series, That's What I Call
Television in 2007. In December 2007, she went on a secret trip to
Basra to broadcast behind-the-scenes footage of the troops. She appeared
as a guest presenter for the show, Have I Got News for You on 27 April
2007 and again on 17 October 2008. On 12 January 2008, she was the
winner in the first episode of Thank God You're Here, a television
comedy series hosted by Paul Merton. In April 2008, Fern Britton
together with her colleague, Phillip Schofield was the presenter of the
revived 'all star' version of the super hit ITV show, Mr and Mrs. The
show was broadcast on Saturday nights as a six-part series.

Apart
from television presentations, Fern Britton has also featured in
advertisements for Ryvita Minis. She performed the title role in a
Cinderella pantomime in 1988. In March 1998, her first book, Fern’s
Family Favourites, was released and in October the following year, she
launched her second book Winter Treats and Summer Delights. Fern, My
Story was published in November 2008 by Michael Joseph and it ranked
among the Top Ten Bestseller list by The Sunday Times.

Bettina Vasilis can
hardly believe it when basketball star Brady Cullen asks her out, and
she just about faints when her strict father actually approves of him.

But
when school starts up again, Brady changes. What happened to the sweet
boy she fell in love with? Then she meets a smoldering guy in his
twenties, and this “cowboy” is everything Brady is not—gentle, caring,
and interested in getting to know the real Bettina.

Bettina knows
that breaking up with Brady would mean giving up her freedom—and that
it would be inappropriate for anything to happen between her and Cowboy.
Still, she can’t help that she longs for the scent of his auto shop
whenever she’s anywhere else.

When tragedy strikes, Bettina must
tell her family the truth—and kiss goodbye the things she thought she
knew about herself and the men in her life.

19 Apr 2014

"Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once, too, back when she was eighteen."

In
the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole
fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides
of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities
of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But as the summer
of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the
young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.

Now,
twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to
Oriental for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave
shelter to their high school romance. Neither has lived the life they
imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that
forever changed their lives. As Amanda and Dawson carry out the
instructions Tuck left behind for them, they realize that everything
they thought they knew -- about Tuck, about themselves, and about the
dreams they held dear -- was not as it seemed. Forced to confront
painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths
about the choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing
weekend, they will ask of the living, and the dead: Can love truly rewrite the past?

As a child, Nicholas Sparks lived
in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Grand Island, Nebraska, finally settling
in Fair Oaks, California at the age of eight. His father was a
professor, his mother a homemaker, then optometrist's assistant. He
lived in Fair Oaks through high school, graduated valedictorian in 1984,
and received a full track scholarship to the University of Notre Dame.

After
breaking the Notre Dame school record as part of a relay team in 1985
as a freshman (a record which still stands), he was injured and spent
the summer recovering. During that summer, he wrote his first novel,
though it was never published. He majored in Business Finance and
graduated with high honors in 1988.

He and his wife Catherine,
who met on spring break in 1988, were married in July, 1989. While
living in Sacramento, he wrote his second novel that same year, though
again, it wasn't published. He worked a variety of jobs over the next
three years, including real estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling
dental products by phone, and started his own small manufacturing
business which struggled from the beginning. In 1990, he collaborated on
a book with Billy Mills, the Olympic Gold Medalist and it was published
by Feather Publishing before later being picked up by Random House. (It
was recently re-issued by Hay House Books.) Though it received scant
publicity, sales topped 50,000 copies in the first year of release.

He
began selling pharmaceuticals and moved from Sacramento, California to
North Carolina in 1992. In 1994, at the age of 28, he wrote The Notebook
over a period of six months. In October, 1995, rights to The Notebook
were sold to Warner Books. It was published in October, 1996, and he
followed that with Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember
(1999), The Rescue (2000), A Bend in the Road (2001), and Nights in
Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian (2003), The Wedding (2003), Three Weeks
with my Brother (2004), True Believer (2005) and At First Sight (2005)
all with Warner Books. All were domestic and international best sellers
and were translated into more than 35 languages. The movie version of
Message in a Bottle was released in 1999, A Walk to Remember was
released in 2002, and The Notebook was released in 2004. The average
domestic box office gross per film was $56 million -- with another $100
million in DVD sales -- making the novels by Nicholas Sparks one of the
most successful franchises in Hollywood.

The film rights to
Nights in Rodanthe, True Believer and At First Sight have been sold, and
Nicholas Sparks has written the screenplay for The Guardian, though he
has not offered it for sale at this point.

He now has five children: Miles, Ryan, Landon, Lexie, and Savannah. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and children.

His
ancestry is German, Czech, English, and Irish, he's 5'10" and weighs
180 lbs. He is an avid athlete who runs daily, lifts weights regularly,
and competes in Tae Kwon Do. He attends church regularly and reads
approximately 125 books a year. He contributes to a variety of local and
national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing
Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides
scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually.

17 Apr 2014

When U.S. Marine Logan
Thibault finds a photograph of a smiling young woman half-buried in the
dirt during his third tour of duty in Iraq, his first instinct is to
toss it aside. Instead, he brings it back to the base for someone to
claim, but when no one does, he finds himself always carrying the photo
in his pocket.

Soon Thibault experiences a sudden streak of luck—winning
poker games and even surviving deadly combat that kills two of his
closest buddies. Only his best friend, Victor, seems to have an
explanation for his good fortune: the photograph—his lucky charm.

Back
home in Colorado, Thibault can’t seem to get the photo—and the woman in
it—out of his mind. Believing that she somehow holds the key to his
destiny, he sets out on a journey across the country to find her, never
expecting the strong but vulnerable woman he encounters in Hampton,
North Carolina—Elizabeth, a divorced mother with a young son—to be the
girl he’s been waiting his whole life to meet. Caught off guard by the
attraction he feels, Thibault keeps the story of the photo, and his
luck, a secret. As he and Elizabeth embark upon a passionate and
all-consuming love affair, the secret he is keeping will soon threaten
to tear them apart—destroying not only their love, but also their lives.Filled
with tender romance and terrific suspense, The Lucky One is Nicholas
Sparks at his best—an unforgettable story about the surprising paths our
lives often take and the power of fate to guide us to true and
everlasting love.

An engrossing, complex, romantic fantasy perfect for fans of Kristin Cashore or Maggie Stiefvater, set in a wholly unique world.

Salome
Montgomery fears winter—the cold, the snow, the ice, but most of all,
the frozen pond she fell through as a child. Haunted by the voices and
images of the strange beings that pulled her to safety, she hasn't
forgotten their warning to "stay away." For eleven years, she has
avoided the winter woods, the pond, and the darkness that lurks nearby.
But when failing health takes her grandparents to Arizona, she is left
in charge of maintaining their estate. This includes the "special gifts"
that must be left at the back of the property.

Salome
discovers she’s a key player in a world she’s tried for years to avoid.
At the center of this world is the strange and beautiful Nevin, who she
finds trespassing on her family’s property. Cursed with dark secrets and
knowledge of the creatures in the woods, his interactions with Salome
take her life in a new direction. A direction where she'll have to
decide between her longtime crush Colton, who could cure her fear of
winter. Or Nevin who, along with an appointed bodyguard, Gareth,
protects her from the darkness that swirls in the snowy backdrop. An
evil that, given the chance, will kill her.

9 Apr 2014

A novel about love, loss, and sex -- but not necessarily in that order.
Before her mother died, Shelby promised three things: to listen to her
father, to love as much as possible, and to live without restraint.
Those Promises become harder to keep when Shelby's father joins the
planning committee for the Princess Ball, an annual dance that ends with
a ceremonial vow to live pure lives -- in other words, no "bad
behavior," no breaking the rules, and definitely no sex.

Torn
between Promises One and Three, Shelby makes a decision -- to exploit a
loophole and lose her virginity before taking the vow. But somewhere
between failed hookup attempts and helping her dad plan the ball, Shelby
starts to understand what her mother really meant, what her father
really needs, and who really has the right to her purity.

Published: 24th April 2012Publisher: Little BrownGoodreads : Click hereSeries: Not part of a seriesSource: Review Copy from Publisher

There are whispers of a
ghost in the slaughterhouse where sixteen-year-old Wen assists her
father in his medical clinic—a ghost who grants wishes to those who need
them most. When one of the Noor, men hired as cheap factory labor,
humiliates Wen, she makes an impulsive wish of her own, and the Ghost
grants it. Brutally.

Guilt-ridden, Wen befriends the Noor,
including their outspoken leader, a young man named Melik. At the same
time, she is lured by the mystery of the Ghost and learns he has been
watching her … for a very long time.

As deadly accidents fuel
tensions within the factory, Wen must confront her growing feelings for
Melik, who is enraged at the sadistic factory bosses and the prejudice
faced by his people at the hand of Wen’s, and her need to appease the
Ghost, who is determined to protect her against any threat—real or
imagined. She must decide whom she can trust, because as her heart is
torn, the factory is exploding around her … and she might go down with
it.

7 Apr 2014

People think of Mother
Nature as a gentle lady. They forget that she's also
Death...Sixteen-year-old Poppy Sinclair believes in quantum particles,
not tarot cards, in Dawkins, not druids. Last summer, in a boating
accident in the Lake District, Poppy had a brush with death. But the
girl she finds face down in Scariswater hasn't been so lucky. As she
fights to discover the truth behind what she believes is murder, Poppy
is forced to concede that people and things are not always what they
seem and, slipping ever deeper into a web of lies, jealousy and
heart-stopping danger, she comes to realise - too late - that the one
thing that can save her has been right there, all the time.

As the above book is book 2 in the series, below is the blurb from book 1...

Evie O’Neill has been
exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling
streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926,
and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish
pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will
and his unhealthy obsession with the occult.

Evie worries he’ll
discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought
her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded
with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her
gift could help catch a serial killer.

As Evie jumps headlong
into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfold in the city that
never sleeps. A young man named Memphis is caught between two worlds. A
chorus girl named Theta is running from her past. A student named
Jericho hides a shocking secret. And unknown to all, something dark and
evil has awakened.